The origins of India's Islamophobia

Mujibur Rehman's book offers a comprehensive overview of the background, existence, and dilemmas of being a Muslim in today's India

Shikwa-E-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims

Author: Mujibur Rehman

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 360

Price:  Rs 999

Forty years ago, it was mandatory to flag down every public bus several times as it made its way to the Indian capital from one of the northern states, especially if its originating point was anywhere in Punjab or Chandigarh. Police personnel would rush inside and ask all Sikhs (identifiable as men wearing turbans) to get down. They were then questioned — where were they coming from, what was the destination and the journey’s purpose — subjected to a pat-down search, and their luggage poked with rifle bayonets. The humiliating exercise over, the buses would resume its journey while cops at the barricade awaited the next bus. In time, such discriminatory treatment of Sikhs reached horrific heights after Indira Gandhi’s assassination and they, chiefly men, were killed in thousands mainly in northern and western India, but even in some southern cities, Coimbatore most notably.

In a few years, the Punjab imbroglio began petering out even though terrorist violence lingered on till the mid-1990s. But innumerable Sikh men across north India did not wait for anti-Sikh sentiments to abate. Without anyone’s prodding, they forlornly headed to barber shops and emerged clean-shaven. Altering identity appeared to be the easiest way out of the trauma of being ceaselessly viewed with suspicion. Over time, such discrimination ceased and the several among the new generation of Sikhs began becoming comfortable with their distinct identity.

Around the time such targeting of Sikhs began to abate, angry Hindu youth found a new target — Muslims. Unlike discrimination against Sikhs, which has petered out, discrimination against Muslims has persisted and taken new forms. This is backed by organisations advocating an exclusionary ideology, which have grown from a marginal force to India’s dominant political fraternity. In this time, the Sikhs have begun to be considered by these Hindu nationalistic groups as “their own” and their religion is dubbed an “Indic” faith.

In his compelling book, Mujibur Rehman argues that the Hindu rightwing forces in India do not consider Muslims minorities in the same way they do the Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. Instead they are seen as “colonialists”, descendants of those responsible for what — several Hindutva leaders assert — 1,200 (or 1,000) years of slavery of this nation and its people. This alone explains why the crude label of Babur Ke Santan applied to millions of India’s Muslims has found widespread resonance. If Muslims desire to be counted among the majority, Hindutva leaders argue, they must declare themselves Hindus;  they may practise their faith of Islam in the privacy of their homes, but never in public. If they are unwilling to agree to these terms, they are considered aliens to this land, unworthy of equal rights.

Given this reality, the political future of India’s Muslims should be a top concern of at least those who do not back the Hindu nationalistic idea. But for that they have to first accept the reality of their present — decades of wishy-washy advocacy of inclusive politics. True, several political parties, including some coalition partners of the Union government, recently condemned what was an undeniably majoritarian order. The Uttar Pradesh government directive that food stall owners on the route of the Kanwar Yatras must display the owner’s name was eventually stayed by the Supreme Court; but the order has been “voluntarily” heeded by most stall owners, mostly Hindus, while a large number of Muslim-owned eateries have shut shop for this period. Even if only this episode is factored in, there can be no disagreement with the author’s contention that the objective of the Hindu rightwing is to “de-Islamise” India. Despite this one-off response to the order on eatery boards, the author’s contention is valid: The bigger challenge for the Muslims is not the hostility of the Hindu right, but confusion among the secular parties.

Quite often, Professor Rehman contends, the targeting of Muslims in India is set against the post-9/11 global rise in Islamophobia. He however, serves a reminder that in India this process began before this and sharpened in the course of the agitation for the Ram temple, waged from the mid-1980s and in the early-1990s, leading to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. After this, other developments, such as emerging militancy and separatism in Kashmir, fused with the Ayodhya movement and caused prejudice against Muslims to take the form of a pan-Indian sentiment. Over this almost three-decades long period, the situation has reached a stage at which Muslims in specific situations go though the same responses as the Sikhs did when they were physically identified because of their turbans. It is not necessary to “look” Muslim — their name, or even the form of greeting they use is enough to draw looks of suspicion.

The book, with its six standalone chapters and the introduction and a concluding chapter, offers a comprehensive overview of the background, existence and dilemmas of being a Muslim and their situation in today’s India. The chapter on Indian Muslim women is particularly compelling, especially in the context of the Hindu rightwing presenting them as the “aggrieved” party within the community and making efforts to co-opt them politically. In recent years, in words but not in action, majoritarian leaders have reached out to the Pasmanda Muslims, but Professor Rehman argues that its prevalence among Muslims in India stems mainly from poor knowledge of Islam’s egalitarian beliefs. Even otherwise, he contends correctly, caste is not as water-tight as among Hindus and relations are more interactive. This timely book will add to the literature on an issue that requires more extensive exploration and analysis.

The writer is a NCR-based author and journalist. His books include The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right and Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.  @NilanjanUdwin